Grab Your Pliers, It’s Time for Maker Camp on Google+!

Forget those annoying health forms, endless carpools and that stinky bug spray. MAKE Magazine and Google+ have the perfect summer solution for your teens. Perfect as in: free, fun and educational. (Just don’t tell the kids about that last part.) Maker Camp!

MAKE magazine has partnered with MomImpact and The Maker Mom to help spread the word about this new virtual camp.

Maker Camp will feature real 30 projects in 30 days from July 16 to August 24 over virtual Google+ hangouts.

Designed for teens (because you need to be 13 to have a Gmail account and be on Google+, right?), Maker Camp can also be attended by younger children along with an adult who has a G+ account.

Campers will build projects featured in the fab School’s Out edition of MAKE magazine, but there are other great projects in the works, too. In addition to making cool stuff, teens will expand their G+ circles to make new friends. After all, this is one camp that doesn’t waitlist; an unlimited number of teens can join in.

Field Trip Friday, a virtual trip via Google+’s Hangout on Air feature

Take a peek!Details for the first week of camp, including supply lists, are already posted. Doesn’t it look fun? An all-star roster of counselors will walk teens through the project each morning, as well as share tips for completing it.

In the afternoon, the day’s counselor will host a G+ Hangout On Air to answer questions and give campers a chance to show off their projects with photos and video.

My teen will be away at engineering camp next week, but I’ll be there with the tween. I’m going to hedge my bets and guess that Thursday will be one of our days because he’s a fan of polymer clay (i.e. Sculpey) projects, as you will see below, and I’m a fan of Mark Frauenfelder. But it’s free and ongoing, so we can drop in any day, at any time.

When will you be there? Let me know; maybe we can join in together.

If you’d like to build out this program in your community without turning your living room into Maker Camp Central send a local librarian, summer program coordinator, or youth director to this page for more info. If you have questions about this exciting first Maker Camp, see the Maker Camp FAQ page. If you don’t see the answer you need there, feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll get it answered for you.

Happy camping!

A gift for the social studies teacher circa 2011.

Call of Duty. If I wasn’t his mother, I would wonder about the child who made this.

That last clay model is awesome. My boys have made similar ones. Bloody and decapitated is their favorite…

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About Kim

I’m a Chicago-area mom of teen boys who is passionate about sharing ideas and resources to raise kids who love Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). I’m a blogger, vlogger, baker and maker, as well as the founder of #STEMchat. I also write about parenting gifted kids, girls in STEM and the Maker Movement. [Read More...]